In addition to asking Rome for more money to defend the Mediterranean, Philip also pressed for higher taxes from the people of the Low Countries to pay for their own defense. Castile could no longer send more money there. It had already done so intensively between 1556 and 1559 to defeat France. The Castilian elites were unwilling to continue paying for wars they did not consider their own. Their Flemish subjects, however, were reluctant to accept this tax increase, especially in a context of religious repression. Various political and institutional problems prevented Philip from achieving the tax reform he intended. What began as a revolt ended up as a costly and endless war that demanded an even greater financial effort from Castile and determined the rest of the reign.

The new king returned after a four-year absence and immediately asserted his authority. He settled the refinancing and had the Cortes accept a long-overdue increase in the encabezamiento because all the ordinary revenues were mortgaged on juros. He secured this increase, albeit smaller than desired, through a strategy he would employ in future financial crises: leveraging the animosity of the Castilian elites towards the bankers to officially penalize them by suspending repayments, while concurrently shielding them from the repercussions of such suspensions and negotiating confidential agreements in subsequent contracts.

High military spending led to a steady increase of the juros, while ordinary revenues remained stagnant. This situation was not sustainable. In the fall of 1574, after three years of delays and procrastination in the Cortes, Philip imposed a tripling of the encabezamiento. He abandoned the tax collection contracts with the cities and bypassed the implicit constitution of the realm. He secured a formal consent from the Cortes in March 1575, which the cities rejected. Then, Philip held the Cortes in abeyance in Madrid as he planned his next steps. This chapter focuses on the dealings with the Cortes and the asientos during this period. These dealings will end with the inevitable clash of September 1575 and the suspension of payments to the bankers.

Considers whether Congress has any direct power to limit the scope of the president’s pardon power generally or in particular cases, and whether, if not, it might have some power to create procedural rules or administrative institutions that could improve the exercise of the presidential pardon power and its transparency.

The Basic Law did not outline details about the Court’s operation, and so it was up to legislatures to define how the powers of the Court would be wielded. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) (spearheaded by Adolf Arndt and Georg August Zinn) wanted a strong Court comprised of majority lay judges that could hear constitutional complaints. The government coalition (led by Thomas Dehler and Hans-Joachim von Merkatz), on the other hand, wanted a larger Court with professional judges and no right of direct constitutional complaints. Compromise was reached by the intervention of the upper house of the German legislature, especially with the efforts of Rudolf Katz, who mediated the two positions: Lay judges were sacrificed, yet the door was left open for constitutional complaints.

In this chapter, we examine the potential explanations for the different legal outcomes of citizenship deprivation bills. We focus particularly on the French government’s failure to introduce citizenship deprivation in the Constitution in 2015, and the UK’s successful removal of statelessness as a safeguard against deprivation powers for naturalised citizens in 2014. We consider what seems to hinder the legislative expansion of citizenship deprivation powers and, by contrast, what can facilitate it. In doing so, we address another key concern of this book: potential explanations for variations in citizenship deprivation regimes. As this chapter reveals, part of ‘what gets in the way’ of governments’ deprivation practices has to do with the degree of rigidity of states’ constitutional structures.

Chapter 2 discusses Swift’s statement of political principles, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions (1701), and shows how international relations proved essential both to his fully developed, neoclassical balance-of-power theory as well as his practical political objectives in contemporary debates about the constitution and emerging War of Spanish Succession. Swift wrote against the Tory majority in the House of Commons and thus attacked the tyranny of the majority – but he also took a more realistic and permissive view of popular political participation than has been acknowledged. That view reflected his belief in the voice of the people and consensual government, including when discovering the national interest within the international context. The masses helped to rescue England from French imperialism, just as threats of French hegemony put the domestic political need for power-sharing into perspective. Swift defends executive action for the sake of national security but does not abandon constitutional constraints.

Our task was not helped by the fact that the civil service had been prevented by the Cameron government from making any preparations for a leave vote. In fact, the civil service and No. 10 generally were still in a state of shock. The only real European policy experts all came from the ‘Remain’ side of the fence. While their professionalism was not in doubt, it was clearly going to be a huge task for them to pivot to embrace the new reality of the UK’s changed status with the EU. It wasn’t long before the UK’s long-serving Ambassador to the EU, Ivan Rogers, was moved on. His expertise was never in question, but in the weekly meetings with the Prime Minister in her study behind the Cabinet Room, he barely sought to disguise his dismay at the UK’s decision. Treating Brexit as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized was never going to go down well with the Brexiteers still drunk on their own success. What Ivan saw as pragmatism, the Brexiteers saw as pessimism. He quickly became public enemy number one and was swiftly replaced.

Contrary to many libertarian arguments, the Declaration does not manifest hostility to government. Many of its complaints are that the British had provided too little government, not too much. It also makes repeated arguments about how the king and parliament had violated the British constitution. The Declaration’s deepest commitment is to constitutional government and the rule of law. “Under Law” is a better description of the nation’s founding than the “Under God” that was later added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Parliament is the central institution of UK democracy. It is both a representative body, reflecting the diverse views of the nation, and its senior decision-making forum. In the years after the Brexit referendum, when both the public and the governing party were deeply divided, Parliament struggled to navigate these representative and decision-making roles. The arguments, both inside Parliament and about Parliament’s role, were frequently heated and controversial. Many Brexiteers had argued in favour of boosting Parliament’s sovereignty, and yet the institution emerged battered and bruised from the process – having been repeatedly maligned, shut down by a Prime Minister and reinstated by the Supreme Court, and described as ‘broken’ on the opening page of the 2019 Conservative manifesto. This chapter explores how such contradictions came about. It concludes that the blame laid at Parliament’s door by campaigners, journalists and politicians was often unfair, and damaging of public trust. The Brexit process left much rebuilding to be done.

This chapter introduces the U.S. Constitution by exploring its purposes, functions, and significance as a written document, contrasting it with Britain’s unwritten constitutional system. It argues that a written constitution limits governmental power, including legislative authority, unlike the British system of parliamentary supremacy. The chapter traces the American shift in the 1760s toward viewing constitutions as superior laws fixed by the people’s consent and enforceable against the legislature. It outlines the settlement functions of constitutions – establishing government structures, ensuring stability, and channeling disputes – emphasizing how written constitutions enhance these functions. The chapter further examines the ends of free government, balancing liberty and order through democratic self-governance and the protection of natural rights, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution’s preamble. It introduces the Constitution’s structural features – separation of powers, federalism, checks and balances – while addressing critiques of its alleged undemocratic nature and introducing the Founders’ intent to create republican remedies for the diseases most incident to republican government.

Chapter 1 starts by exploring the history of the term ‘settlement’. Having traced its emergence in the seventeenth century, the chapter investigates the making of the ‘settlement’ act of 1662. A study of parliamentary records uncovers the emergence of new legislation in the post-Restoration context and illuminates the final stages of the process when amendments were made that shaped the settlement legislation for centuries to come. Subsequent laws led to the introduction of new ‘settlement certificates’. The third section traces the spread of the ‘settlement’ system and its impact on both local administrations and the negotiating strategies of the poor – central issues pursued throughout the book. These explorations draw on records from two corners of England, Sussex in the south-east and Lancashire in the north-west. Additional sources are employed from metropolitan London and other localities.

In the early modern system of impressment, able-bodied common men of fighting age entered armies and navies by conscription. This form of service was an obligation of English subjects who did not pay levies, and it was based on royal prerogative, but many people conceived of pressed service as contractual, nevertheless. Men of both middling and lower status loathed compulsory military service – as becomes clear from their testimony in a 1641 parliamentary investigation. The tension between the honor that lay in giving service to the king and kingdom, and the dishonor that lay in being pressed, allowed for an articulation of an edge at which coercion might invalidate consent, depending once again on the status of each man whose service was in question.